Nicosia – Cyprus citizenship will now be harder to come by as Cyprus has tightened vetting procedures for its naturalisation by investment scheme, at the same time with limiting the number of passports to 700 per year.
Cyprus Minister of Finance, Harris Georgiades, announced that the new procedures will be “stricter and more credible” and that the number of passports granted under the scheme will be capped at 700 a year.
He said that on top of the scrutiny Cypriot authorities currently put applications through, foreign agencies will also carry out “exhaustive checks” to ensure the suitability of any applicant.
The minister admitted the system was not perfect, which is why it needed to be modified.
“The government recognizes that there may have been weaknesses, but it has shown a willingness to correct any weaknesses,” Georgiades said.
He went on to reject suggestions the Cypriot government was running a ‘passports-for-cash” scheme.
“We reject the notion that the Cypriot passport is up for sale,” Georgiades told state radio RIK. “We don’t depend on this scheme but it’s a useful complement to the tools we have to stimulate economic development.”
The Cypriot official suggested that foreign companies may have been behind negative media reports in order to prevent investment in Cyprus.
Cyprus introduced the scheme in the wake of a 2013 financial crisis that brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy and forced it to accept a multibillion-euro rescue program from creditors. Several other EU member countries ran similar schemes.
MP Marios Mavrides, has estimated that the scheme generated around €4.8 billion between 2013 and 2016.
Under the scheme’s rules, an applicant has to make an investment in Cyprus of at least €2 million in either real estate, Cypriot businesses, stocks or government bonds. Applicants must also have no criminal record and declare permanent residency in Cyprus.
Meanwhile, earlier in April the EU statistics service, Eurostat, announced that the biggest group of foreign nationals that obtained Cypriot citizenship in 2016 were Russians, followed by UK nationals. Eurostat data showed that close to 1 million foreigners became EU citizens that year.
A total of 4,660 persons acquired Republic of Cyprus citizenship in 2016, according to data published by Eurostat, out of which 24.8% naturalised Cypriots were Russians, 15.6% Greeks and 7.2% from the United Kingdom.
